Until nearly the end of December we employed ourselves by accompanying La Ronde on his trapping expeditions. We thus could distinguish the track of every animal found in the forest, and learnt much of their habits and peculiarities. Cheadle was especially fascinated by this branch of the hunter’s craft, and pursued it with such diligence and success, that he was very soon able to make a trap and set it almost as quickly and skilfully as his accomplished preceptor, La Ronde. There is something strangely attractive in the life, in spite of the hardships and fatigues which attend it. The long, laborious march, loaded with a heavy pack, and cumbered with a quantity of thick clothing, through snow and woods beset with fallen timber and underwood, is fatiguing enough. The only change is the work of making the traps, or the rest at night in camp. Provisions usually fall short, and the trapper subsists, in great measure, upon the flesh of the animals captured to obtain the fur. But, on the other hand, the grand beauty of the forest, whose pines, some of which tower up above 200 feet in height, are decked and wreathed with snow, and where no sound is heard, except the occasional chirrup of a squirrel, or the explosions of trees cracking with intense frost, excites admiration and stimulates curiosity. The intense stillness and solitude, the travelling day after day through endless woods without meeting a sign of man, and rarely _seeing_ a living creature, strikes very strangely on the mind at first. The half-breed trapper delights in wandering alone in the forest; but Cheadle, who tried the experiment for two days, found the silence and loneliness so oppressive as to be quite unbearable. The interest in the pursuit was constantly kept up by the observation of tracks, the interpretation of their varied stories, and the account of the different habits of the animals as related by our companion. There is also no small amount of excitement in visiting the traps previously made, to see whether they contain the looked-for prize, or whether all the fruits of hard labour have been destroyed by the vicious wolverine. At night, lying on a soft, elastic couch of pine boughs, at his feet a roaring fire of great trees heaped high, from which rises an enormous column of smoke and steam from the melted snow, the trapper, rolled up in his blanket, sleeps in peace. Sometimes, however, when the cold is very intense, or the wind blows strongly, a single blanket is but poor protection. The huge fire is inadequate to prevent the freezing of one extremity, while it scorches the other, and sleep is impossible, or, if obtained, quickly broken by an aching cold in every limb as the fire burns low. On these winter nights the Northern Lights were often very beautiful. Once or twice we observed them in the form of a complete arch, like a rainbow of roseate hues, from which the changing, fitful gleams streamed up to meet at the zenith.